


I Hope We Both Die

by Spinchip (Thatkindghost)



Category: Lego Ninjago
Genre: Closure, Dissociation, Gen, Manipulation, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27218020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thatkindghost/pseuds/Spinchip
Summary: Zane sneaks out of his room and goes down to the dungeons. He talks to Vex one last time before he and his friends leave for Ninjago.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 52





	I Hope We Both Die

**Author's Note:**

> Title from No Children by The Mountain Goats
> 
> I have a lot of thoughts. head full. Enjoy the read!

They stay in the Never Realm two days after Zane shatters the scroll of forbidden spinjitzu across the throne room floor, releasing his iron grip on the people beneath him. There are loose ends to tie up, decisions to be made, judgements to pass in the days to come. The nights are overwhelmed by celebration, feasting and fire and colors, traditional clothing and dancing and singing and drinking until too drunk to stand- songs are written on the spot about the occasion, _The Fall of the Frozen King_ , sung with the bellies of men in rejoice. The land exploded in revelry, euphoria and jubilation as messenger hawks swept the country- _the king is dead!_ Their message cheered, _and we are free!_

They burned effigies of his silhouette late into the night, bonfires made of wood and glory charring as fire and warmth are welcomed back into the land. The bloody fear of a country cauterizing and clean.

Zane spent that night in political meetings, shackled to a chair, as his friends tried to convince the nobles not to slaughter him.

He doesn’t say a word in his own defense, nothing but facts- the cave, the amnesia, Vexs manipulation, nothing more. He stares ahead, eyes unfocused, and tries not to dwell on the sick look on everyone’s faces as he describes the brutality against him, how Vex broke him and scattered the pieces. The hand the cuff is strapped around is unfamiliar, and he can’t stop staring at it. He’d seen his reflection once since he’d awoken, a passing glance in a mirror as he’d been escorted by two guards, and the man looking back wasn’t him. This wasn’t his body, he hadn’t done those things, he couldn’t have.

But he did. The static in his mind shrieked and howled, overhwelming and loud.

Grimfax asks him to stop, and Zane looks down at his hand that’s not his hand and the ice that’s spiralings from his fingertips and confesses _I don’t know how._ His voice is quiet and scared and he’s been broken all in pieces and the pieces are put back all in the wrong order. Grimfax asks him never to return, and it takes Zane too long to register that he’s being allowed to live. He is put under constant supervision and released to his friends, guards trailing his every move, and while statues of him burn he sits in a bedroom surrounded by his friends with his head in his hands. He doesn’t talk, he doesn’t cry, he just sits while they flounder around him. He feel sick and wrong and nothing they say can soothe him.

Day turns to night and he lays in bed, staring blankly at the ceiling, and when the sun rises he doesn’t move. No one has come to get him, Vex’s voice doesn’t seep through his door to prepare him for his day, there’s no morning report he must attend to. Why get up at all? Cole and Lloyd try to coax him out of bed, try to get him to eat. He can’t stomach it, only moving from his bed to sit listlessly in the fancy sitting room with his friends, silent and hurt and lost. Night comes again, the men outside his room peek open the door every hour to check he’s still there.

But he is a ninja, to his very core, they couldn’t trap him if they tried.

Shadows cling to his shoulders because he asks it of them, sneaking down the halls without a sound. The guards are lax and relaxed, they scan their halls with tired eyes, they yawn and chat and joke, and it’s all exploitable weakness. He slips by them easily, it’s no challenge, disgusted by their actions. His guards had been serious, and the fools that thought they could speak into his bedchamber with knives or vials of poison were caught long before they could get close. If Zane willed it, he could slip into the king’s room now and reinstate his rule, all it would take is one blade.

His stomach churns and he feels sick immediately.

 _I made them scared_ , he reminds himself, _they can relax now that I’m dead. My era of pain is over, I won’t harm anyone._ The thoughts don’t help him, and he feels unmoored and unsure, disconnected from reality and his body.

The stairs he takes one at a time, carefully. He’d been down here only a handful of times, maybe less, when prisoners were too sickly or injured to be moved to the throne room, when their execution was too important to entrust to another. It was warmer than before, a lingering smell of blood as the ice trapping it had melted. There’s only one prisoner here, now.

The wood door seems almost innocent. There’s no guard down here, maybe a rotating patrol that would be in at some point, but for now Zane can walk right up to the cell and peek inside.

Vex isn’t asleep, sitting up in bed as staring watchfully at the door as he listens to Zanes approach. He blinks at the sight of him, owlish and shocked.

“My Emperor.” He says dumbly. They’ve stripped him of his armor and status, plain clothes hung unfamiliar and strange off his frame. The bed is quaint, nicer than anything they’d provided before, with a thick blanket to keep out the chill. A lamp sits on the floor, lit by a flickering fire. It’s the only light in the room other than Zanes eyes.

“Vex.” He says, surprised when his voice drops an octave on instinct, deeper and more menacing.

The man surges from his bed to the little window between them, “My Emperor.” He repeats, devoted and reverent and slimy, “You’ve come to release me. Now is our chance, they are drunk from their celebration, they have underestimated our strength! We can reclaim your throne!”

Vex rambles and his voice is like honey, a soothing balm on the frayed and raw edges of Zanes mind. Familiar and comforting and constant. The storm in his head calms, a rush of relief to the all consuming shame and disgust, the sick unreality he’d been stuck in slipping away with each of his advisors words, and Zane lets his head _thunk_ to rest against the bars. His eyes close while Vex fills the silence with promises of power and retribution, drawing the tension out of his shoulders sentence by sentence. Specific words are lost, his voice running together and fuzzy and tranquil in a way that settles the static threatening his eyes. Zane had tuned out, but his eyes snap open when Vex’s voice trails too close.

"It can be like it was before.” he vows, power hungry and opportunist, only a slab of wood away.

Zane studies him for a long moment and Vex doesn’t flinch under his eyes, confident in Zanes loyalty. Why else would he come, if not to free him? if not to ask him to help him take back his throne? “they asked me what they should do with you.” He says instead of freezing out the lock and letting him go, his voice reverting back to normal, “After they allowed me to live, after I told them all you’d done to me, they asked me what punishment I would pursue.”

Vex draws back, taking a step deeper into his prison.

“They asked me if they should execute you.”

Frost crawls up the bars where he clutches them between his fingers, and Vex tracks it with wide eyes, “Execute..?” he breathes, shaking his head, “Is it evil to speak? You’d condemn a man for his words? I held no weapon!” Vex argues instantly, scrambling away from him as the implications for his late-night visit sink in. there was no one here to protect him. No witnesses.

“I was your blade.” he watches Vex’s movement like a hawk, staying still as a statue as his element overtakes the cell.

“And what a blade you were,” He sneers, back pressed against a cold stone in fear, “How you reveled in bloodshed, I didn’t ask you for that. My hands are clean. Who is the beast among us, truly?” he throws, and it hurts to hear more than Zane expects.

He stays silent, years of one-sided conversations engrained in his code so deeply he doesn’t know how to respond.

“And now you’ve come here to execute me. Your final act as my emperor. What’s another stain upon your soul?” Vex grabs at the lamp, holding it close to ward of the encroaching chill even if the cold hadn’t bothered him in years, “And how poetic, that am I destroyed by the monster I created.”

That stings, white hot and painful in his chest, “I am not a monster.” He says, and cant hide the hint of desperation in his voice. His friends had promised him he wasn’t. He cracks the ice forming around his fingers, wrenching his hands from the bars and tucking them beneath his armpits to chase away the frost, “I told them to spare you.”

Vex doesn’t shiver, staring with dark eyes across the space between them, “That doesn’t sound like the ruler I know.” He says, stunned.

Zane feel something in him crack. He grins and it’s all teeth, raw and unkind, “The ice emperor is dead.” He informs him sharply, clenching around himself and hunching his shoulders, looking Vex directly in the eyes. “You are the last of his regime, and it will die with you, whenever that may be. The formling Chief and the King will speak tomorrow to pass your judgement.”

“Why are you here?” Vex flings in response, body tense, “Why have you come?”

Zane has an answer, it crowds behind his teeth and no matter how hard he tries he can’t swallow it, “Because I love you.” the confession tastes like blood, “You were all I had. I trusted you, my greatest friend.”

Vex spits, “If that were true, you’d unlock that door.”

“You deserve this.”

“I hope you die.” Vex tells him, venom in his words that burns across Zane’s mind.

He slams into the bars, ice cracking out violently from the wood and stone, and Vex yelps, “I am already dead!” he snarls, anger threatening to sweep away his rational thought. Vex flinches, unused to the ire of the Ice Emperor focused on himself, frost nipping at his toes.

Silence draws, and Zane pulls away from the bars again. The cold recedes, “I’m leaving tomorrow." He says, quieter, "I am going home, and this will be the last time we see each other.”

Vex doesn’t say a word, glaring at him between the bars. Heartbeats pass in the quiet, his internal clock ticking before Vex breaks, “What do you want? A goodbye?” he asks hotly, “I never cared about you. You were means to an end.”

Zane doesn’t want a goodbye, not really. He wants Vex to tell him what to do. He wants direction. He doesn’t know how to decide for himself anymore. Years and years on that throne, whispers from Vex’s silver tongue, _attack_ Vex would advise and Zane would jump to it. He did nothing but listen to the whims of his general, he obeyed without question while believing all the while he was hearing a friend. He wants those years back. He wants to recognize himself in the mirror, to know the man looking back, to… to…

He wants to let him go. He wants to listen to Vex’s voice and allow it to wash out the pain, the confusion, the shame. He wants to forget all of it. He wants to believe Vex is his friend, he wants to believe he wouldn’t hurt him.

But he did.

And now all he wants is to kill him.

“Goodbye.” He says, instead of skewering him to the wall. It’s closure, maybe.

He takes the stairs back to the main level two at a time, and when he sneaks back into his room he stagger in, exhausted. He slips beneath the covers half a second before the guards check back in on him, feigning sleep, and when he opens his eyes again he has to turn away from the sunlight cutting across his face- it’s morning. He’d slept through the night. They’ll be gone before the Formling Chief makes it to the capital, he won’t know how Vex’s story ends. He finds, surprised, that it doesn’t really matter.

He’s going home today.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [I Hope We Both Die(PODFIC)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27403297) by [WhaleKingdom (BadFeelin)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadFeelin/pseuds/WhaleKingdom)




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